


XIX

by Crowgirl



Series: Welcoming Silences [21]
Category: Foyle's War
Genre: Anxiety, Awkward Kissing, Awkwardness, Canon Era, First Kiss, M/M, Nervousness, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Slow Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-14
Updated: 2015-10-14
Packaged: 2018-04-26 07:28:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4995640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crowgirl/pseuds/Crowgirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hasn’t it become almost embarrassingly clear over the past few months that he’ll accept just about any invitation Foyle gives?</p>
            </blockquote>





	XIX

Foyle steps into the dark hall first and waits for Paul to come in and close the door. 

Paul pulls the door shut, then fumbles his coat off in the dark and reaches to hand it to Foyle. He feels Foyle’s fingers brush the material, the back of his hand, and then grip tight around his wrist.

‘Paul.’

There’s an unasked question there, a tension in Foyle’s voice that he can hear but not decode. ‘Sir?’

‘You... You _want_ to be here.’ It’s half a question, half a statement.

‘Yes.’ He answers without hesitation but the question puzzles him a little. Why ask now? Hasn’t it become almost embarrassingly clear over the past few months that he’ll accept just about any invitation Foyle gives? Dinner, garden planning, tea, a fruitless searching session in the attic looking for two oil lamps Foyle was sure he had bought several years ago, and, once, a trip to an estate sale some miles inland; between the two of them, they had managed to bundle a small mahogany side table into the boot of the car. He knows it’s somewhere upstairs now but that’s all; Foyle had been very definite about not wanting him to attempt to carry anything up stairs. Now, he hears Foyle take a breath and waits for the rest of the question but it doesn’t come. Foyle’s fingers squeeze for another minute and then release and take Paul’s coat from his hands. 

Paul stands in the dark and tries to think of what to do next. Everything he thinks of seems unfitting: too much or too little. 

So instead of trying he stretches out a hand until he finds Foyle’s shoulder. His eyes are getting used to the deep dim of the hallway and he can see Foyle as a dark shape against darkness, standing near the hall table but without reaching out for the lamp or even, Paul thinks, to hang their coats; they seem to be in a shapeless heap on the table. So he finds Foyle’s shoulder, feels Foyle take a breath when he touches him. ‘Christopher?’

Foyle makes some slight movement Paul can’t see and there’s a soft _flump_ that Paul realises is Foyle’s hat dropping on the pile of coats. He doesn’t speak again for a minute and Paul keeps silence with him, only moving closer a step or two until their sleeves are brushing. This close, he can hear Foyle breathing and, when Foyle moves to brush at his eyes, Paul can see the movement and hear the whisper of cloth. 

He guesses. Going to the Hanfords to give the news of the death of a last son must have been agony. ‘Andrew will be--’ 

‘You don’t know that. None of us do.’ Foyle’s voice is flat, not accusatory or angry, just dull and it makes something in Paul’s chest ache to hear it. ‘I’m an old man, Paul, I--’ He pauses for a moment and then goes on and his voice is stiff, as though he doesn’t want to speak but feels he has to. ‘There comes a time when it’s just too late to--’ Foyle stops and then shrugs without finishing.

Paul stares at the place where Foyle’s face should be and then reaches out and snaps the light on. Foyle flinches back a little, blinking and stepping away from the table. Paul keeps a hand on his arm, wanting to see his face now, immediately, not when he’s had a chance to reassemble an appropriate expression. Foyle’s tired -- any fool could see that. His skin has a translucency that only becomes visible when he’s very tired or ill and his eyes, usually a bright sparking blue, are dark. The lines on his face seem carved more deeply and Paul wants to reach out and try to smooth them away. He only remembers just in time that he can’t and, in the moment of confusion, drops his hand from Foyle’s arm.

Foyle is meeting Paul’s gaze but not saying anything, clearly letting Paul work this out to his own conclusions but Paul can’t find any. The only things coming to him are questions. 

Why ask him _now_ if he wants to be here? 

Whatever Foyle is looking for in Paul’s face, Paul has no idea if he sees it or not, but something in his expression loosens and he almost smiles, although it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. ‘I’m going to put the kettle on.’

Paul stands where he is, one hand on the pile of coats, watching Foyle push through the swinging door. _‘I’m an old man,’_ he’d said. _‘You want to be here?’_ he asked. Why talk about it being too late? Too late for what? What had Foyle been trying to do -- hoping to do? wanting to do? dreaming of doing? -- that he's suddenly worried about having missed? Paul’s never heard him talk about regrets from his youth or anything like that.

Paul stares blankly at the wall opposite him and only becomes slowly aware that he’s staring at a watercolor, one he happens to know Foyle’s wife painted before Andrew was born. It’s a lovely little canvas; he thinks he knows the river bend. The water runs wide and slow, with a gentle fall over a rocky grade into a deep pool. He studies the painting blindly for a few minutes and then blinks and _looks at it._

There’s another framed landscape next to it and a small pen and ink sketch of Andrew when he must’ve been about five. There’s a hand on Andrew’s shoulder in the drawing and part of a forearm; Paul thinks it looks masculine, perhaps Foyle had been standing behind or beside his son. 

He can hear Foyle moving around the kitchen beyond the swinging door. There’s a narrow line of brighter light edging it on three sides now and the unmistakeable hiss of water going into a kettle and the _popclickhiss_ of the gas. He hears Foyle sigh and mutter something to himself, then a cupboard opening.

The pictures. He blinks and refocuses them.

‘Tea?’ Foyle calls.

‘No sugar.’ 

Foyle laughs quietly. ‘I know.’

And that’s it. He stands still in that moment of illumination that comes so rarely on a case when he _knows_ he has it right, it _can’t_ be any other way.

This -- _all of this_ \-- the tea, the dinners, the checkers, the garden -- all of it was an invitation. Foyle wasn’t _hiding_ something, giving him clues he had to decipher, making him _guess._ It was all _right here_ \-- it had always been _right here._

He stares at the small canvas of the riverbend, then at the other framed images: a recent colour snap of Andrew leaning on the wing of a plane, smiling and squinting into the sun; a watercolor of this house, bright in spring sunshine; and a small black and white photograph of a smiling woman, squinting slightly in bright light, her hands up to shade her eyes. The image is very slightly blurry as though she had been moving at the exact moment the shutter snapped. Foyle has never told him so but Paul knows this is Rosalind. 

He takes a step back, almost into the doorway of the sitting room, and gazes at the wall in front of him. Andrew. Rosalind. Memories of a sunlit river. This hadn’t been Foyle asking if he wanted to share _one_ thing, _this_ meal, _this_ afternoon, _this_ evening. Maybe it had been to start with -- maybe it had been a moment of sympathy because of his leg, because of Jane, Paul doesn’t know, but it isn’t _now._ God only knows how long it _hasn't_ been that -- months, perhaps, and he's _missed_ it. All this time Paul had been so worried about Foyle that he hadn’t realised Foyle was worried about _him._

He gets to the kitchen as quickly as he can. As he pushes open the kitchen door, Foyle is just pouring hot water into the teapot. Paul stands in the doorway and watches as Foyle puts the kettle on a back burner and carefully swaddles the teapot in a thick cosy, turning to put it on the kitchen table. Foyle raises an eyebrow at him.

‘I don’t -- I’m not --’ Paul’s not used to not having words. He doesn’t think of himself as a poetic man, by any means, but he’s normally not at a loss. This time, though, the certainty is so gut-deep he can’t haul it up into the light enough to put words to it. ‘Christopher, I--’

Foyle’s expression is solidifying, his eyebrows drawing together, the lines around his mouth deepening again, and he stands slightly back from the table, sliding his hands into his trouser pockets. His shoulders straighten and pull back until he’s almost standing to attention and no, no, _no,_ this is exactly what Paul _didn’t_ want to happen, this is Foyle closing himself off as surely as if Paul had simply slammed a door in his face. So Paul doesn’t let himself waste more time trying to put his thought into words. 

Instead, he gets round the kitchen table as fast as he can, ignoring the slight drag in his bad leg that he would normally have worked to hide, and kisses Foyle -- kisses _Christopher_ \-- with as much determination as he can, cupping his hands around Christopher’s face, swallowing the small noise he makes when their mouths touch. 

Christopher is perfectly still for a moment -- just long enough for Paul to start to get anxious, then he feels Christopher’s hands at his waist, fingers knotting in his shirt. 

Then, before he can think anything else, Christopher is kissing him _back,_ hard, pressing against his mouth, pushing him physically back until Paul comes up against the countertop near the sink with a bump that jars him into a gasp. He hauls in a deep breath and Christopher’s mouth is on his again and Paul can feel Christopher’s hands tugging at the hem of his shirt, yanking it up out of his trousers and sliding beneath, pressing warm just above his hips. 

It should probably feel strange and it does, a bit. After all, they started this morning with a wordlessly shared complaint over the desk constable’s idea of ‘properly brewed coffee’ and finished off the afternoon with the delivery of the worst kind of bad news and this -- this is -- new -- this is _all_ new except for all the ways it isn’t and warmth, arousal, pleasure are thrumming along all his limbs. Paul gasps again when Christopher’s hands find skin under his vest. 

He’d been prepared for the rush when Jane touched him for the first time. He’d actually had some amount of pleasant anticipation of it being better than his previous experience. After all, the girl he’d been with before he hadn’t been in love with, hadn’t been intending to marry. 

This is not like any of that. 

Christopher’s hands are warm, almost hot, and they’re a solid firmness around his waist and he _wants_ them to move, God, he _wants_ that like he hasn’t wanted anything in a long, long time. He nearly forgotten his body _did_ this -- that his body knew how to feel good -- and damned if he hadn’t forgotten what it was like to have someone _want_ to touch him and perhaps that isn’t what Christopher’s skin on his means, perhaps this is some strange code between men that he doesn’t understand, but it _feels_ like it means want and desire and affection. The idea nearly brings tears to his eyes and he wants to give it _back,_ wants so badly for Christopher to know he feels the same way--

‘Paul?’ Christopher’s voice is a little rough; he pauses to clear his throat and Paul has to blink to refocus him at the close range. 

‘What? --What?’ His head is singing as if he had taken a stiff shot of liquor and he’s having to restrain himself from reaching out and _grabbing._ Instead, he makes his hands relax and rest on Christopher’s shoulders.

‘Are you all right?’ 

‘I’m fine, I’m fine, I --’ He realises, listening to himself, that he isn’t exactly making his own best case. His voice is shaking, he sounds near tears. He drags in a deep breath and forces himself to let it out slowly. ‘I’m fine. I just didn’t -- expect you to --’ Christopher’s hands tense and, before he can draw back, Paul clamps his own hands over them. _‘No._ I meant that I -- I --’ Christ, he can’t even form full sentences. ‘I didn’t think...you would touch...me like that. I didn’t think...men did that.’ 

Christopher tilts his head slightly. ‘You...don’t want me to?’

Paul shakes his head. ‘I didn’t think you _would.’_

Christopher purses his lips and the corners of his mouth almost look as if he wants to smile. He resettles his weight and Paul bites his tongue hard so as not to gasp again at the press of Christopher’s body against him. It isn’t that he’d ever thought Foyle was a _small_ man -- shorter than him, obviously, but somehow not _smaller_ and this -- this is really just making it patently clear he hadn’t thought about that distinction enough or maybe that it doesn’t matter at all. He’s not quite sure. The solidity of Foyle’s body against his is making it a little bit hard to think and _that_ thought in and of itself is a dizzying concept.

‘Then what _did_ you think I would do?’ 

‘I -- don’t know.’ Paul musters up a smile that he hopes looks less unsteady than it feels. ‘I -- I didn’t really let myself think about it. I didn’t--’ He shakes his head. ‘I didn’t know what I’d be thinking about.’

Christopher studies his face for a minute and Paul can see him weighing something for a moment before he makes a small movement like a half-shrug. ‘I never felt there was a great difference. Not really.’

Paul stares at him for a minute before the full import hits him. ‘...you...oh, you...’

‘A long time ago.’

Paul can’t think of anything more intelligent to say than, ‘Oh.’

Foyle watches him for a minute, head slightly on one side. ‘Oh?’

‘Well, I--ah--’ Paul tries desperately to get his brain to engage and finally huffs out a laugh. ‘I don’t know what to say to that.’

Foyle’s mouth twitches into something that’s almost a smile. ‘That seems fair.’ He glances down at where his wrists disappear into the ruck of Paul’s shirt. ‘Especially if you didn’t think I would be gentleman enough to return a kiss.’

‘That’s not fair!’ Paul protests. ‘It isn’t that I didn’t think you were _going_ to. It’s just that I -- er -- I --’

‘Thought you’d get a peck on the cheek like your Auntie Mabel?’

‘No!’ Paul narrows his eyes. ‘Are you just taking the piss?’

This time Foyle really does smile. ‘Maybe a little.’ He flexes his fingers against Paul’s skin. ‘This is...more or less of a first for me, too, you know.’

‘But you just said--’

‘A long time ago, I said. We were both terrified--’ Foyle shrugs. ‘And just a tiny bit more brave than scared.’

‘What -- I --’ Paul doesn’t know how to finish the sentence but Foyle takes a half step back and gives him a long once-over, blue eyes dark and patient. After a moment’s silent thought -- _summing him up,_ Paul thinks -- Foyle holds out a hand.

‘Shall I show you?’

**Author's Note:**

> A multitude of thanks to my beta readers [elizajane](archiveofourown.org/users/elizajane) and [Kivrin](archiveofourown.org/users/kivrin).
> 
> And, I have to say, this is the section it makes my palms sweat to hit 'post' on.


End file.
